As Paul Says…Don't Give Up
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8 June 2018 at 1:14 pm #548424
This is just an encouragement for anyone struggling with any of the techniques Paul shows in his videos. He makes everything look easy. I recently undertook a project where I was making some dovetail boxes out of hard maple. In my mind it was going to be so easy. I have watched Paul cut so many dovetails, how could this go wrong?
The first two pieces I fit together were so bad that I almost gave up. I’d never cut dovetails in anything but soft pine. This maple is really hard. The gaps in the dovetails made me sick. I milled this wood by hand from logs and now I had gaps. I walked away for a day and then tried the second side of the first box. It came together better. To put this in perspective, for each joint I’m cutting (5 tails, 6 pins), it is taking me about 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to chop out. My chisels are sharp but I’m striving for perfection. I was pleased that the second set looked better. Last night I was finishing the 3rd side of the second box. I’m getting a little faster, but the accuracy is substantially improved. By this time I’ve cut 35 tails and 42 pins.
My mind told me this wouldn’t be hard to do. My muscle memory wasn’t there yet. The practice is all that has changed. I thought my sawing skills were ready – but this is different enough from ripping a board that even that needed practice. I hope to have the last side finished tonight and can start gluing. I’ve still got that first set of tails that I need to doctor up somehow – suggestions? This is going to go in my church, so I want it to look perfect. Below is the corner I finished last night.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.8 June 2018 at 3:21 pm #548426Your picture looks pretty good. A little clean up with your plane and those are fine. As you found out, you really have to be dead on with hard wood. It won’t compress like pine does. The tail cuts have to be absolutely perpendicular to start with and if they’re not, when you mark the pins, they are going to end up either too fat or worse, with gaps. And it’s really easy to split the pin board at the half pins if they’re even a hair too tight. About all I know to do with gaps is fill them with a little wax. You can get that stuff in any color. Keep practicing and don’t be discouraged. I’ll bet I cut a hundred of them before I ever got one I thought looked good.
Doug, you can fill the holes in the dovetails with a “plug” made from a piece of scrap material. Paul shows how to do this in this video:
Jump to 20:40 to see how he did it.
It is actually fairly easy to do and if you get the grain close it is very hard to see.
It works kind of like repentance – very acceptable in a church setting.27 June 2018 at 12:17 pm #548830I finished these a week and a half ago. Here are the finished photos. These sides are all at least 3 pieces of wood that I glued up – some sides had 4. I racked my brain matching grains up so they looked like one solid piece of wood. I did get the first few gappy dovetails doctored up by filling in with offcuts.
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